Nightmare's bullet mold
| ( | |
|---|---|
| Name | nightmare's bullet mold |
| Appearance | blade-tipped mold |
| Base price | 300 zm |
| Weight | 15 |
| Material | iron |
| Monster use | Will not be used by monsters. |
A nightmare's bullet mold is a type of tool that appears in dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack. It is a chargeable magical item that can create blood-bullets or blood-spears at the cost of hit points and experience.
Generation
Nightmare's bullet molds do not randomly generate.
All Undead hunters start with an uncursed nightmare's bullet mold.
The Undead hunter quest will always generate two nightmare's bullet molds, one in the quest home level's chest (top left room), and one on the quest goal level, placed on a random square.
Male Vampire Madpeople will find a nightmare's bullet mold in their quest box, alongside a soldier's rapier.
Description
Vampire Undead hunters who have taken the blood-spears defilement upgrade and apply a nightmare's bullet mold will receive an amount of blood-spears based on their XL. In all other cases, the bullet mold will instead make blood-bullets.
Nightmare's bullet molds can be improved through smithing at a forge to imbue any object properties they are given onto the projectiles they make, following the same rules as imbuing weapons. Object properties can either be applied directly, using any applicable spells currently known, or through the corresponding gems.
When applied, the mold subtracts 30% max hp from your current hp as nonlethal damage, leaving you with at least 1 hp. Attempting to apply the mold when it would leave you with 0 hit points will fail. It also subtracts 30% of the experience points needed to reach (XL - 1) from your current XP total–possibly draining a level–but not past that. It then creates a quantity of projectiles based on your XL before the subtraction:
- creates 5 projectiles at XL 1–12
- creates 10 projectiles at XL 13–21
- creates 20 projectiles at XL 22–30
These projectiles will always be made of hemargyos, making them blunt/piercing/slashing weapons. Their enchantment is determined by your impurity, gaining +1 per 4 points of impurity you have, up to a theoretical +12 at 48 impurity. The beatitude will be the same as the bullet mold's, and the projectiles will always appear as fully identified. If blood-bullets hadn't been formally identified, successfully applying it will do so.
A character that is wielding a shanta-pata/twingun pata in their main or offhand will have it become bloodied for +10 turns additively after a blood mold has been successfully used to create projectiles,
XP loss
The amount of XP lost per use of a bullet mold or of a phlebotomy kit, based on XL at the time it was applied:
| XL 1–15 | XP loss | XL 16–30 | XP loss |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0 | 16 | 5010 |
| 2 | 6 | 17 | 6460 |
| 3 | 9 | 18 | 7869 |
| 4 | 15 | 19 | 9510 |
| 5 | 30 | 20 | 11310 |
| 6 | 60 | 21 | 13290 |
| 7 | 120 | 22 | 15450 |
| 8 | 240 | 23 | 17790 |
| 9 | 480 | 24 | 20310 |
| 10 | 960 | 25 | 23010 |
| 11 | 1200 | 26 | 25710 |
| 12 | 1560 | 27 | 28710 |
| 13 | 2160 | 28 | 32010 |
| 14 | 2910 | 29 | 35610 |
| 15 | 3810 | 30 | 34500 |
Messages
- You jab the bullet mold into your leg!
- If below 18 insight.
- You jab the bullet mold into your head!
- You jab the bullet mold into your <leg/head>! But nothing flows into the mold!
- When below hp minimum.
Origin
The concept of using your own health to create ammunition for your weapon stems from the Blood Bullets from the 2015 game Bloodborne, where pressing up on the D-pad would add +5 to your Quicksilver Bullet count. The animation accompanying this sees the hunter stabbing their left leg with a vial, presumably to extract blood and directly infusing it into the bullets— dNetHack's description of the Nightmare's bullet mold as a blade-tipped mold seems to be based on this idea. This uses the opposite leg that Blood Vials use to inject the syringe-shaped vial into the leg (see the Phlebotomy kit). We know from the Old Hunter Trousers' item description that: "A widespread belief of the period was that 'beast blood crept up the right leg'[...]". Whether this is due to, e.g. most hunters being right-handed isn't made clear. What this may hint at, is that hunters prefer to extract blood from the side "more prone" to the beast blood and inject blood vials into the other, in a likely attempt to postpone the beast blood's effects.
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